If President Clinton is Serious About ‘The American People’s Business,’ Here’s What He Should Say is the State of the Union

(Washington, D.C.): According to today’s New York Times, President Clinton is
expected to
deliver a State of the Union address that devotes fully one-quarter of its content to
security
policy. This would be a first. In his previous appearances before the Congress, Mr. Clinton has
given short shrift to the state of the U.S. military and the international environment in which it
must be prepared to operate.

Presumably, the President will depart this time from past practice in recognition of the fact
that
neither he nor his countrymen can any longer afford to ignore dangerous trends in both areas.
The question is: Will President Clinton use this occasion accurately to describe these
ominous realities — and to offer realistic, effective approaches for dealing with what is, like
it or not, the most important of all “the American people’s business”?

A Scorecard

Herewith a scorecard for evaluating the effectiveness of the President’s speech and the
adequacy
of his proposals in the security policy arena:

• Defending America: On a previous occasion, the President used his State
  of the Union
  address to declare that “there are no missiles pointed at America’s children.” This was not true
  when he said it; it is not true today. Worse yet, the Clinton Administration has contended that
  no such threat will emerge for at least 15 years. In fact, as the blue-ribbon Rumsfeld
  Commission reported last July, the United States is likely to have “little or no warning” of
  emerging ballistic missile threats. Consequently, the Nation can no longer afford to defer
  making the promptest possible deployment of effective anti-missile defenses.

At this writing it is unclear whether Mr. Clinton will continue to shrink from taking that
step (for example, by promising to spend $7 billion in the future on deploying missile
defenses while deferring a decision to make such a deployment) or whether he will
announce that he has decided, in principle, to deploy a fixed ground-based defense at
one or possibly two sites (Alaska and/or North Dakota). Either way, he will be
declining to take the step that is necessary: Announcing now that he is directing the
Pentagon to bring on-line at the earliest possible moment flexible, competent anti-missile
defenses for the protection of U.S. forces and allies overseas and the
American people at home. This can be done years faster and at a fraction of the cost
of a less capable ground-based system by modifying the Navy’s AEGIS fleet air
defense system to allow it to defend against a range of ballistic missile threats. ¹

• Providing more than Band-aids for a hollowed-out U.S. military: The
  Clinton
  Administration has made known its intention to add $110 million to the defense budget over
  the next six years. This is a step in the right direction to the extent that it halts the relentless
  reduction of the Pentagon’s resources that has occurred with devastating effect on Mr.
  Clinton’s watch. The level of funding proposed is wholly inadequate, however, to the task of
  restoring the readiness, modernity and esprit de corps that the Nation’s armed forces
  require if
  they are to safeguard the country’s interests.

Just how inadequate has been demonstrated in an important study conducted over the
past few months by two respected defense analysts — Dr. Dan Goure of the
Center for
Strategic and International Studies and Jeffrey Ranney of Management
Support
Technology, Inc. Their conclusion: Utilizing the data compiled in 1997 by the
Pentagon as part of its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the U.S. military would
need an increase of approximately $100 billion per year or more through 2010 to
meet the Clinton QDR’s requirements. ²

• Giving priority to maintaining the effectiveness, safety and reliability of the U.S.
  nuclear
  deterrent: President Clinton is expected to use tonight’s speech to unveil his
  Administration’s
  campaign to force the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) through the U.S. Senate this
  year. Unfortunately, this treaty will be neither verifiable (useful nuclear tests
  can be
  conducted below the level that can be detected) nor effective in curbing
  proliferation.
  North Korea is but the latest nation to demonstrate that it is possible to acquire nuclear
  weapons without testing them.

What the CTBT will do, however, is make it impossible for the United States
to
conduct the sorts of tests that have proven indispensable over the past fifty years to the
maintenance of safe, reliable and effective nuclear forces. Presumably, these
considerations were uppermost in the minds of the forty-four U.S. Senators (nine
more
than would be needed to prevent ratification of this treaty) who declined last year to
support an amendment described by its sponsors as a test vote on the CTBT. ³ The
Nation would be better served if the President directed his Administration’s
energies towards assuring the continuing viability and surety of the U.S.
deterrent, rather than pursuing arms control initiatives inimical to these
preeminent national security requirements.

• Preventing more money from going down ‘black holes’ in Russia’s military-industrial
  complex: Today’s New York Times reports that President Clinton will
  “propose spending $4.2
  billion over the next five years, a 68 percent increase over the $2.5 billion already budgeted” to
  “reduce the risk that [Russian] materials, technology and expertise for weapons of mass
  destruction [WMD]…fall into the hands of rogue nations or terrorists.” As it happens,
  elsewhere in today’s editions, the Times sheds light on the intractability of the
  problem at
  which the President proposes to throw more money: Dr. Valery Bakayev, a Russian
  scientist long associated with the Kremlin’s covert biological weapons program has been
  working in Teheran for more than five years. His denials about having been
  associated with
  either the former Soviet germ warfare program or that believed to be underway in Iran, while
  implausible, are typical of the assurances provided by Russian apparatchiks to keep the
  Nunn-Lugar monies flowing.

The President should come clean with the American people. There are no
sure-fire
means of preventing the hemorrhage of WMD-related know-how and equipment
from Russia (or, for that matter, from China, North Korea, Eastern Europe or
Western nations) into dangerous hands. Before any additional billions are squandered
in a vain attempt to do so in Russia, a thorough accounting should be provided of
what has become of the money already spent there for this purpose. How much of
it wound up in Swiss bank accounts, Riviera real estate, the hands of the mafia or
effectively subsidizing the Russian military-industrial complex? Rather than massively
increasing Nunn-Lugar funding in the hope that it might do some good, the United
States should — in the absence of concrete proof that the U.S. tax dollars are producing
tangible and desirable results — apply these resources to the yawning task of
protecting
the American people against the effects of nuclear and other WMD proliferation.

• Telling the truth about ‘peace processes’: President Clinton must address
  the fact that his
  diplomatic efforts aimed at promoting satisfactory outcomes in the Balkans, North Korea,
  Angola, the Middle East and Persian Gulf have proven, at best, to have bought time for
  America’s adversaries. At worst, they have materially degraded the U.S. ability to contend
  effectively with these foes — as evident in current policy meltdown over Kosovo. ⁴ Just as his
  appeasement of China has cleared the way for Beijing to engage in greater
  repression at
  home and greater assertiveness abroad, the Administration’s efforts to do deals with
  Slobodan
  Milosevic, Kim Jong-Il, José dos Santos,
  Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein (care of UN
  Secretary General Kofi Annan) have served to set back American interests —
  and those of its
  friends and allies.

The time has come to resist, not accommodate, these dictators.
President Clinton
should use the State of the Union to demonstrate that he recognizes that his policies to
date have not had the desired results. He should begin to discuss the alternative
approaches that must now be taken. A good place to start would be by explaining how
he intends to go beyond the useful steps he has recently, belatedly taken — the rhetoric
and bombing that set the stage for the removal from power of Saddam Hussein and his
ruling clique. Specifically, Mr. Clinton should announce his intention to begin
working at once, in a concerted and systematic fashion, with the most tested and
reliable of Iraq’s opposition forces — the Iraqi National Congress.

The Bottom Line

Were the President to make these themes centerpieces of his next two years in office, the
American people would have reason to believe that the state of their Union will continue to be
healthy and secure in a dangerous world. Should he persist in rejecting the policies of “peace
through strength” that the times demand, however, Mr. Clinton will bequeath to his successor a
nation ill-prepared to contend effectively with the forces that will threaten that Union in the
future.

¹ For more on this concept, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Wanted: An End To The
‘Hollow’ Military — And A ‘Feasible,’ ‘Practical’ Missile Defense ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_167″>No. 98-D 167, 29
September 1998); and a Heritage Foundation blue-ribbon study which can be accessed via their
Website at www.heritage.org.

² See Clinton’s Defense Increases Look More Like
Political ‘Triangulation’ Than A Cure
For The Hollow Military (No. 99-D 03, 4 January
1999).

³ See R.I.P. C.T.B.: Biden-Specter Amendment’s
Phyrric Victory Shows Decisive Senate
Opposition to Clinton’s Flawed Test Ban (No.
98-D 158, 2 September 1998).

⁴ See Clinton Legacy Watch # 32: ‘Wimpy diplomacy’
— ‘I’ll Gladly Pay You Tuesday’ for a
Signing Ceremony Today (No. 98-D 172,
13 October 1998).